More than cars: Alibaba says it has bigger ambitions than just robotic taxis. In June 2016, the company launched an AI-powered “city brain” system in Hangzhou, where it’s headquartered, to crunch data from mapping apps and increase traffic efficiency. Simon Hu, the president of Alibaba Cloud, says the firm’s ultimate goal is to produce the kind of autonomous driving that uses such data to help integrate transportation into urban infrastructure.

Why it matters: China is scrambling to compete with America in developing driverless cars as quickly as possible. This news is another sign that it really means business.

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Yiting SunI contribute to MIT Technology Review from Beijing, where paying with cash and cards is seen as an antiquity and the daily chatter of the tech community is abuzz with AI startups. I have a wide-ranging beat here: from AI to blockchain and virtual reality. Figuring out how these new technologies work is fun, but I am particularly interested in how they are changing the lives of real people

ImageDenys Nevozhai | Unsplash

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Author

Yiting SunI contribute to MIT Technology Review from Beijing, where paying with cash and cards is seen as an antiquity and the daily chatter of the tech community is abuzz with AI startups. I have a wide-ranging beat here: from AI to blockchain and virtual reality. Figuring out how these new technologies work is fun, but I am particularly interested in how they are changing the lives of real people

ImageDenys Nevozhai | Unsplash

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